AFR – Joanne Tran
Former Maple-Brown Abbott stockpicker Joseph Ziller has made his first major hire at his two-year-old investment boutique, appointing Northcape Capital’s former analyst Wendy Herringer as he looks to build out the firm under Perennial Partners’ umbrella.
Herringer is due to start this month at Sydney-based Ziller Funds Management as a senior analyst after working as a portfolio manager and analyst on Northcape’s global equities strategy for three years. That followed more than decade working across Barings Asset Management and HSBC Asset Management.
Ziller Funds Management founder Joseph Ziller has made his first major hire since joining the Perennial stable. Louise Kennerley
The $15 billion Northcape shuttered its global fund in March after failing to raise enough money to be considered competitive in an increasingly cutthroat environment for funds management. At its peak, the strategy managed about $150 million across US and UK equities, but performance lagged the MSCI World Accumulation Index.
“It’s our first major hire,” Ziller said. “When I first met Wendy what really stuck out to me, which is important for the firm, is she has a deep kind of passion for stocks and research and is also an extremely strong communicator.”
The hire comes just weeks after Ziller inked a deal with Perennial Partners in late August for the firm to take a 50 per cent interest, bringing his boutique into Perennial’s multi-affiliate stable.
Ziller established the business in November 2022 after 11 years at Maple-Brown Abbott. His concentrated global equity fund now manages $10.5 million and has returned 39.6 per cent since inception, thanks to some timely bets in Figma, Palantir, Tesla and Coinbase.
Figma, led by tech whizz Daniel Field, became one of the hottest names on Wall Street after the stock rocketed 250 per cent when it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange at the end of July. Palantir, which develops powerful analytics platforms, has also enjoyed a strong run, with the shares up more than 140 per cent in 2025.
Wendy Herringer previously worked on Northcape’s global equities fund. Eamon Gallagher
“Our performance has been very strong,” Ziller said. “We’re ticking over to our three-year track record at the end of this month. That’s a big point in time when people start becoming really interested in the fund.”
Ziller’s strategy places unusual emphasis on the quality of company founders which he describes as the “most intensive part” of the investment process. He uses a ranking system to help him filter out the roughly 800 founder led companies that are publicly listed around the world.
“We’re not just backing fashionable stocks, we’re backing high-quality founders, their alignment, focus and character,” he said. “That’s where the bulk of our outperformance has come from.”
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